Honor 6 Plus Smartphone Review

Are two better than one? The key feature of the Honor 6+ is the dual-camera of the smartphone. HTC tried this in the past as well and failed miserably, but the Chinese do a better job. The 6+ also convinces with a good set of features as well as great battery runtimes.

The Honor 6 Plus is a 5.5-inch smartphone for 400 Euros (~$437) that scares off the competition with its features, at least on paper. The technical equipment does not really leave anything to be desired, but you should not expect new records in terms of performance. As expected, the smartphone is equipped with a Kirin processor from the parent group Huawei. Still, the P8 already showed that the performance is completely sufficient and provides a smooth user experience. One key feature is the dual-camera of the Honor 6+, which is also supposed to take good pictures in difficult lighting situations.

In the same price range are rivals like the HTC Desire Eye and Samsung Galaxy A5, and also the Huawei P8 which is just slightly more expensive. The majority of high-end smartphones from 2014 is now in this price range as well.

The chassis of the Honor 6+ is made of durable fiber-glass. The alleged aluminum frame is made of plastic as well but looks quite appealing. This impression is also supported by the comparatively high weight of 164 grams. Honor specifies the height with 7.5 millimeters, but the smallest height we could measure was 7.65 millimeters, while the frame is almost 8 millimeters high.

The smartphone is very sturdy and there is just slight creaking when we try to twist it. Pressure is no problem for the Honor 6+, either, only heavy pressure directly on the display can create some ripples on the screen.

The battery of the smartphone is integrated. The two slots on the right side of the Honor 6+ are, unfortunately, not flush with the rest of the case but sit slightly deeper. The first slot can be equipped with a Micro-SIM card, the other one either with a Nano-SIM or a microSD card.

Connectivity

The Micro-USB 2.0 port of the Honor 6+ can be used to charge the smartphone and transfer files to a PC. It also supports OTG, so it is possible to attach external drives or input devices. MHL 2.0 is available as well, so you can transfer the display content to a TV with an optional cable. DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct are also integrated.

The microSD slot supports memory cards with a capacity of up to 128 GB. It is no problem to transfer apps to the additional storage (App2SD), but it is, unfortunately, not possible to install them there directly.

Thanks to the infrared sensor and the app Smart Controller, you can control your own home cinema and the climate control.

Top: audio, infrared, microphone

No ports on the left side.

Right: volume, power, hybrid slot, SIM

Bottom: USB, microphone

Software

The Honor 6+ is shipped with Google Android 4.4.2 and Huawei’s user interface EMUI 3.0. Similar to the Honor 6 or the Huawei P8, you don’t get an app drawer. We already know the Smartphone Manager from other models and it can be used to optimize the smartphone. You also get some handy little tools like a magnifier, a radio and a flashlight. Besides the Google apps, there is only one preloaded third-party app, the Office Suite from Kingsoft.

An update to Google Android 5.0.1 Lollipop and EMUI 3.1 is currently in the works and is supposed to be released this year.

Communication & GPS

The Honor 6+ was announced with dual-band Wi-Fi at the Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, but the actual production unit only supports the IEEE 802.11 standards b/g/n, which means you can only use 2.4 GHz networks. But the signal quality and the range are pretty good in return. The Honor 6+ can still recognize 5 GHz networks, but the signal quality is not very good in this case.

Mobile Internet connections can be established via HSPA+ (up to 42 Mbps) and LTE (up to 150 Mbps), but we miss the 800 MHz band for the latter. It should, however, work well in Asia thanks to the support of many TDD LTE frequencies. The signal quality was really good. It just seems that the Honor 6+ prefers the HSPA connection instead of the faster but also power-hungry LTE. While the Lumia 930 immediately connected to the LTE network of O2, the review unit only used HSPA+ but with a better signal quality.

Bluetooth is only available in version 4.0 but worked really well in our review.

GPS-Test: indoors

GPS-Test: outdoors

The position of the smartphone can be located via GPS, Glonass and BeiDou. The satellite fix is also very fast and precise indoors. Outdoors, the accuracy is down to six meters, so we cannot criticize the performance.

We compared the accuracy of the Honor 6+ with the outdoor navigation device Garmin GPSMAP 64s. The smartphone does a pretty good job and the overall track length differs by around 500 meters from the professional device, which is slightly more than 2%. The reason is that the smartphone does not locate the position as often and therefore takes some shortcuts, which is easy to see in the bridge section.

Garmin GPSMAP 64s

Garmin GPSMAP 64s

Garmin GPSMAP 64s

Honor 6 Plus

Honor 6 Plus

Honor 6 Plus

Telephone & Voice Quality

The voice quality of the Honor 6+ is pretty decent and is sufficient for phone calls. Voices are slightly distorted on both sides, which does not create a natural sound, but it is otherwise free of distortions and allows convenient conversations. The speaker of the device leaves a good impression in quiet environments. It echoes just a bit, and it does not make an audible difference whether we hold the smartphone in our hand or if it is lying next to us on the table.

Cameras

Smartphones are continuing to get better cameras. The Honor 6+ has an 8 MP sensor at the front (3264x2448 pixels, 4:3, f/2.4), which is great news for selfie fans. You should only be careful with the automatic picture retouching because it uses a very strong soft focus, which can create a very artificial look at the highest setting. Both cameras offer many options and can also be triggered with a smile or via voice command, for example.

At the back is a dual-camera consisting of two 8 MP sensors that create one image with around 13 MP (4160x3120 pixels, 4:3, f/2.0). This is supposed to create good pictures, especially in difficult lighting conditions. HTC tried a similar thing with the One M8 and failed miserably, but Honor does a better job. The pictures are actually pretty sharp and the environment is bright when the lighting is bad, but you have to live with small fragments in return. Neither the Samsung Galaxy S6 nor the LG G4 have this problem, but the pictures are not quite as sharp. The edges of the Samsung device in particular appear a bit soft. The Lumia 930 is still undefeated in respect of the sharpness. The results of the LG G4 appear a bit more balanced, but the Honor 6+ still works very well.

The dual-camera also works well under daylight, but the pictures are not as sharp and detailed compared to the high-end competition. The peripheral areas in particular lack sharpness. We like the color reproduction, which leaves a comparatively natural impression. The dynamic range should be higher without HDR, which has to be activated manually. The short trigger time is great and reminds us of the Huawei P8, especially since the ultra-snapshot mode is also available and can be used to take a snapshot within one second with a double tap on the volume-down button.

The super-night mode implements a simplified long-term exposure, but it requires a solid underground or even better, a tripod. The function Wide Aperture simulates aperture ratios of f/0.95 up to f/16, but it does not improve the light sensitivity and just simulates an objective vignetting.

Videos on the Honor 6+ can be recorded in Full HD (1920x1080 pixels, 16:9, 30 fps). Sound is recorded in stereo and is a bit dull, but the picture quality is decent in return. There are also some features for videos like object tracking, but there is, unfortunately, no time-lapse or slow-motion feature.

All in all, Honor equips its flagship device with a good camera, but it cannot quite keep up with the high-end competition. It is well-suited for snapshots and medium-sized copies.

Image Comparison

Choose a scene and navigate within the first image. One click changes the position on touchscreens. One click on the zoomed-in image opens the original in a new window. The first image shows the scaled photograph of the test device.

Accessories

The Honor 6+ is shipped with a modular power adaptor, a USB cable, a quick-start guide as well as a small SIM tool. Optional accessories are currently not available, but there are some in the pipeline.

Warranty

Honor grants a warranty of 24 months for its product.

Input Devices & Handling

The capacitive touchscreen of the Honor 6+ recognizes up to ten inputs simultaneously, and it has very good gliding capabilities. Even two fingers close to each other are recognized without problems, and there are no problems in the peripheral areas, either. Inputs are executed quickly and precisely.

The Android buttons of the Honor 6+ are on-screen buttons. This does reduce the visible screen area in some situations, but the majority of apps can fade them out. It is also possible to adjust the navigation bar to your own preferences. You can, for example, add another input field that gives direct access to the notification center.

The keyboard layout is identical to the Huawei P8 and offers language-specific adjustments. The keyboard layout is simple and allows a smooth typing experience. Swype inputs are supported just like automatic word predictions above the keyboard. You only have to live without a one-hand mode.

Display

The display of the Honor 6+ can convince us for the most part.

The Full HD display (1920x1080 pixels) of the Honor 6+ measures 5.5-inches. This corresponds with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a pixel density of around 401 PPI, which means content is razor sharp. The subjective impression of the display is very good with rich colors and a very even brightness distribution.

The luminance of the review unit is convincing as well at up to 488 cd/m², even though it is still clearly beaten by the HTC Desire Eye, which manages an impressive value of 635 cd/m².

The black value of the Honor 6 Plus is identical to the Huawei P8 (0.28 cd/m², 1,618:1) and is really good. Thanks to the slightly higher brightness, you even get a better contrast ratio. The smartphone manages the highest value in our comparison group and can only be beaten by a rival with an OLED display.

We checked the color accuracy with a photo spectrometer and the software CalMAN. The grayscale quickly shows a slight blue cast, and the deviations from the ideal value are pretty high with a DeltaE over 7. It is basically the same situation for the ColorChecker, where the average deviation of the Honor 6+ is a bit better, but there are pretty big outliers in the blue spectrum. This was, however, no problem in practice. It is even possible to adjust the panel according to your own preferences thanks to a manual white balance.

Grayscale (target color space sRGB)

ColorChecker (target color space sRGB)

Colorspace (target color space AdobeRGB)

Saturation Sweeps (target color space sRGB)

The outdoor capabilities of the Honor 6+ are decent. Reflections are reduced by the LTPS technology, and the high contrast ensures a good visibility of the screen even in bright environments. It is still not possible to watch a movie under direct sunlight, but this is a problem for pretty much every mobile device.

Good visibility in the shade.

It is trickier under the sun, but the 6+ does a good job.

The viewing-angle stability of the LTPS panel inside the Honor 6+ is excellent. The colors are stable from every position and there are no ghost effects. You can only see a slight glow effect when you look at the display from extreme positions from an angle above or below.

Viewing angles Honor 6 Plus

Performance

The Honor 6 Plus uses the 32-bit SoC HiSilicon Kirin 925 with eight cores. It still consists of an older big.LITTLE configuration with four Cortex A7 and Cortex A15 cores each, which are clocked at 1.3 and 1.8 GHz, respectively. You also get 3 GB RAM and the integrated graphics card ARM Mali-T628 MP4, a powerful chip that we already know from the older Huawei Ascend Mate 7.

Our benchmarks show that the review unit is even a bit faster than the older sibling and is only beaten by the HTC Desire Eye (Snapdragon 801) and sometimes by the Huawei P8 (Kirin 930). The system performance is also very good. Micro stutters are hardly perceptible at all. It is, however, unfortunate that Honor did not use a 64-bit SoC, which would have resulted in a small performance gain with the upcoming update to Lollipop 5.1.

The Honor 6+ is equipped with 32 GB eMMC storage, and almost 26 GB can be used for your own files. The is quite a lot in this price range, but the storage is not very fast in return, even though the competition is not that fast in general. The performance is at least much better compared to the Honor 6.

The storage can be expanded by up to 128 GB via microSD card. We checked the performance with the fast memory card Toshiba Exceria (CX32UHS1, UHS-I Class 3, read: 85 MB/s, write: 55 MB/s). The result was sobering. We only measured 10.32 MB/s during writing, but it was at least twice as fast during reading. The performance is still sufficient to store videos directly onto the memory card. You only have to expect longer waiting times when you copy large files.

Games

Games are no problem for the Honor 6+. The ARM Mali-T628 MP4 is powerful enough and supports modern graphics interfaces like OpenGL ES 3.0. More demanding titles like Asphalt 8 run just as smoothly as Angry Birds Transformers (see video).

The well working sensors, the good touchscreen and the great display complete the good gaming experience, only the speaker can be quickly covered by the finger when you hold the smartphone in landscape mode.

Angry Birds Transformers

Asphalt 8

Emissions

Temperature

The Honor 6+ already gets lukewarm while idling and the surface temperatures can reach up to 44.4 °C under load. The two competitors stay much cooler and the Desire Eye stays below 36 °C despite the faster SoC. Still, the results are not critical by any means.

We performed a stress test with the GFXBench 3.1 Battery test. It runs the OpenGL ES 2.0 test T-Rex thirty times in a row while the battery capacity, the frame rate as well as the temperature of the SoC are logged. The performance of the Honor 6+ actually dropped to two-thirds of the original performance over the course of the test.

(-) The average temperature for the upper side under maximal load is 40.7 °C / 105 F, compared to the average of 33 °C / 91 F for the devices in the class Smartphone.(±) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 44.4 °C / 112 F, compared to the average of 35.4 °C / 96 F, ranging from 22.4 to 51.7 °C for the class Smartphone.(±) The bottom heats up to a maximum of 40.7 °C / 105 F, compared to the average of 34 °C / 93 F(±) In idle usage, the average temperature for the upper side is 33.1 °C / 92 F, compared to the device average of 33 °C / 91 F.

Speakers

The speaker of the Honor 6+ is located at the back. The position is not perfect, because you can easily cover it with a finger when you use the smartphone in landscape mode. The sound is also muffled on flat surface like a table due to the flat rear.

The sound itself is pretty balanced and clean up to a maximum volume of 50%, but there will be distortions after that. This is particularly noticeable when you listen to music. Rock music sometimes becomes a distorted screaming at the maximum setting. We therefore recommend headphones or external speakers, but the quality will be sufficient for occasional playback in quiet environments.

The stereo jack subjectively works without problems and there was hardly any signal noise.

Energy Management

Power Consumption

The Honor 6+ is not a particularly frugal device and consumes quite a lot power. Only the smaller sibling Honor 6 has similar power consumption but benefits from the smaller display. LG's G4 consumes more power under load.

The battery capacity is quite generous in return with 3,600 mAh and should be able to compensate for the higher consumption. The power adaptor has a nominal output of 10 Watts (2 Amps, 5 Volts) and is therefore powerful enough.

Battery Runtime

The Honor 6+ can benefit from its powerful 3,600 mAh battery in the runtime tests and dominates the comparison group with good results in all scenarios. Our review unit lasts more than a day in the Reader’s Test and almost four hours under sustained maximum load.

Our tests with an adjusted display brightness (150 cd/m²) offer the best comparability. Both the video runtime test as well as the Wi-Fi test determine great results for the Honor 6+. Our new Wi-Fi test is more demanding, so the results cannot be directly compared to the old test. Those results are usually higher, but the Desire Eye could be one candidate that could have managed an even better result.

If you want to increase the runtimes even further, you can also find an ultra-energy-saving mode in the settings, but it does limit the functionality of the smartphone noticeably.

Pros

Cons

-Limited WiFi range

-No 800 MHz LTE

-Slow microSD slot

-Weak speaker

-SoC throttling under load

Verdict

In review: Honor 6 Plus. Test model courtesy of Honor Germany.

The Honor 6+ from Huawei’s subsidiary is a successful smartphone, which does have a good camera, but the high-contrast display and the great battery runtimes are even more convincing. The list of features is pretty comprehensive and lacks just a few options. The hybrid slot means users have the choice between a storage expansion via microSD card or dual-SIM LTE.

The Honor 6+ can compensate for its small flaws with great battery runtimes, good cameras as well as good features and offers everything you expect from a good smartphone.

The small issues primarily concern details. The colors of the panel are not very accurate, LTE lacks the 800 MHz band, the microSD slot is very slow, and the speaker could be better as well. However, all these small issues will hardly be noticeable in practice, which is why the Honor 6 Plus is still a really good smartphone.

Already as a little dwarf I was fascinated by my Commodore 16 and ignited my enthusiasm for computers. With my first modem I surfed the Btx and later also the World Wide Web. The latest technology trends have always fascinated me and this is especially true for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. For Notebookcheck, I have been on the ball since 2013 and I am looking forward to the innovations that are still to come and that we will put to the acid test for you.

I grew up with computers and modern consumer electronics. I am interested in the technology since I had my first computer, a Commodore C64, and started building my own PCs after that. My focus here at Notebookcheck is the business segment including mobile workstations, but I also like to test new mobile devices. It is always a great experience to review and compare new products. My free time is filled with a lot of sports, in the summer mainly on my bike.